Surveillance
by archangelic.gracelessness
Summary: Harleen has developed a habit of watching her patient at night in order to better understand him. However she ends up learning more than she could have ever in her wildest dreams anticipated. This essentially follows the early days of Harleen's employment, her growing infatuation with, and inevitable manipulation by, the Joker. (Includes other batman villains in the asylum)


x

A young apprentice psychiatrist sits at her desk, her head is clouded and woefully unfocused. No matter how hard she tries to concentrate on the paperwork she is currently working on her train of thought always seems to find its way back to a slender jumpsuited figure, a glint of green eyes, a toothy smile. Realizing with an exasperated sigh that she had yet again lost her focus, she is pulled from her reverie to the realization that she had absent mindedly written ' _joker'_ on paperwork relating to another of her patients, and in pen no less. Being somewhat of a perfectionist, tipex is out of the question, but she's far too burnt out to rewrite the whole damn thing. Irritated and sleep deprived she roughly places down her pen, pinching the bridge of her nose beneath her glasses.

 _This has to stop._

She groggily looks to the light of the digital clock on the desk, the glowing digits read that it is around one thirty seven in the morning.

 _there's still time..._

With a nervous sigh she finally decides to give in to the urge that has been plaguing her for the past three hours give or take, since the majority of the day staff left the building. For days now she has been secretly watching the livestream CCTV from the cell of her most high profile patient, the Joker, in order to observe his behavior, at first out of professional curiosity so to aid her understanding of the man, but more recently it has become something near obsessive. With a trembling hand she guides the cursor to the shutdown button on her desktop.

'This is the _last_ time, Harleen.' she thinks to herself half-heartedly as she exits the room, carefully turning the key with a sharp _click_ to lock her office.

The corridor is eerily quiet. The only sound that greets her is the soft artificial hum of ceiling lights, which dimly illuminate her surroundings with a pale, unsettling glow. She hurriedly makes her way towards intensive treatment, the sharp _clip, clip,_ of her heels on the hard floors echoing through the empty corridor. In the main cellblock, she passes the cells of several sleeping inmates, absentmindedly reading the name plaques mounted to the steel enforced doors as she goes.

 **JERVIS TETCH**

 **EDWARD NIGMA**

 **VICTOR ZSASZ**

However the unnerving atmosphere of the intensive treatment building is made all the worse as she passes the vacant cell of a recently escaped patient, its door slightly ajar exposing a slither of the dark room within. Her eyes scan over the name plaque as she tries to drive away the increasingly paranoid feeling of being watched from the shadows

 **JOHNATHAN CRANE**

Nervously stuffing her hands into her lab coat pockets, she makes her way towards Arkham's smallest and least occupied surveillance room. If she was lucky, like with her previous nightly excursions, it would be totally empty. If not she would tell any suspicious guards that she had simply lost her way on account of being relatively new to the vast complex. She finally approaches her destination, a decrepit relic predecessor to the state of the art surveillance room a few corridors across the way, its plaque lettering scratched and indecipherable. She strains to hear any sign of life behind the thick metal door, and for a moment simply waits, not wanting to be caught breaching certain privacy laws without the necessary clearance from the warden. Deciding that the coast is clear she turns the handle, quickly slipping inside and shutting the door behind her with a rusty _click_.

Not wanting to alert any potential passers by outside the room to her presence, she opts not to switch on any lights. The moonlight streaming through the slats of the blind is sufficient, showing the air to be thick with dust. There are three outdated monitors mounted to the furthest wall, the central monitor being the largest. She pulls up a fraying blue wheely chair to the desk in front of the largest screen, trying not to think about the dingy looking stains on the seat fabric. With bated breath she sits and withdraws a security-staff keycard from her labcoat pocket, which she had previously swiped from a nice young guard named David. As she swipes the card a small cloud of dust rises up from the machine and the opalescent blue glow of the screen flickers. Using the keyboard she quickly flicks through the CCTV feed of each cell in the building fitted with a camera until she finds him.

 **CELL #234 / 01:54AM /**

A room like any standard cell appears on screen, the pale blue and white tiles of the walls cracked and fallen from their plastering, a small simplistic sleeping cot and toilet facilities are mounted to the crumbling walls. It is the green graffiti adorning the decrepit walls in great swirling question marks that distinguish this as the cell of The Riddler; who lays horizontally across his bed-cot with long legs skywards, feet planted against the wall and head hanging slightly off the bed, a book in hand. He appears to be muttering to himself about something or other. Harleen skips to the next cell.

 **CELL #235 / 01:55AM /**

Yet another typical room, this time utterly littered with pages from calendars, with papers plastered to every surface. Again she skips to the next cell.

 **CELL #236 / 01:55AM /**

At last the live feed of her patient's living quarters appears on the monitor. In his cell, the Joker lays outstretched on his bunk; a shock of disheveled and faded green hair, lithe white limbs, long thin fingers wrapped tightly around his erect cock.

Harleen's breath catches in her throat as she stares in wide eyed disbelief at what she is seeing.

Never in all of her time as his psychiatrist had her patient ever shown signs of sexual interest, besides the occasional crude innuendo for what she had assumed was shock value. This act of self-stimulation is an unobserved behavioral first with the Joker. She tells herself that's the reason her heart is pounding so intensely and a prickling heat is slowly creeping across her skin at the sight of him. With trembling hands she reaches for the attached set of headphones hooked up to the monitor and for a moment she deliberates whether she should turn off the feed and leave her patient's privacy, for the most part, intact. Looking back to the screen she watches him, his scarred mouth agape with what she assumes to be ragged breaths, his tongue darting out to wet his chapped lips.

A lump forms in her throat and she swallows hard. Curiosity getting the better of her she gives in and continues to observe, to attempt to learn more about his psyche she halfheartedly tells herself, pointedly ignoring the familiar warmth stirring between her thighs. She hurriedly adorns the headphones, wincing as strands of platinum hair are yanked from her scalp in her eager haste. For a moment there is near-silence from her patients end. Her heart pounds violently against her chest like a caged bird as she watches him, transfixed. His alabaster hand slowly, languidly pumps his shaft, and she hungrily take in the sight. He tightens his grip on himself and tilts his head back on the threadbare pillow, letting out a quiet, drawn out moan, his eyes closed in heady concentration. The desperate sound fills her ears and a shudder courses through her. As her hand trails absent-mindedly towards the hem of her pencil skirt to caress her thigh, she has to admit to herself that her fascination with her patient is straying dangerously far from the realms of professional interest.

The Joker lets out a groan low in his throat and arches his back, bucking his hips up into his clenched fist, his head lolling slightly to the side to face the camera. His glazed stare meets Harleen's through the monitor and for a heart stopping moment she is convinced her can see her. Hear her breath hitch in shock. But before she can react, his eyes are closed once more, his free hand threading through handfuls of ruddy green hair, gently tugging and massaging, eliciting his own soft groans.

'Oh god, _Harleen_ …'

Its then that she hears his hoarse voice call out for her, his brow furrowed in concentration and lips parted. Startled by the sudden mention of her name she unwittingly jolts and hits the intercom button beneath the desk with her knee, and for a brief moment the sound of her sharp intake of breath can be heard in his cell. She winces, staring in horrified silence at the screen for what feels like the longest second of her life, awaiting his reaction. However, she watches relieved as he shows no sign of hesitation, crying out her name with growing desperation as he works his shaft continually faster, chanting her name under his breath like a mantra with eyes screwed shut.

She stares spellbound, struggling to comprehend the sudden enormity of what is happening and how inherently wrong it is that she is anything but disgusted. In his cell the Joker slowly opens his eyes, his gaze in the general direction of the camera once more, and Harleen's heart skips a beat as she locks eyes with him, noticing his countenance to be strangely beautiful as strands of green hair drape across the chalky skin of his angular face, his piercing eyes an almost unnaturally bright shade of green. After a solid minute of watching him grow more and more frantic in his pursuit of orgasm he comes hard with a final thrust into his clenched fist, collapsing spent onto his bunk.

His scarred mouth curls into a lazy smile, and Harleen can't shake the feeling that he had somehow knowingly put on a performance. She dismisses the thought.

Removing the too-tight headphones, the morning chorus of birdsong can be heard outside the window of the small surveillance room, and Harleen is reminded that she has appointments in a matter of hours, one of which is with the man she just observed. Still reeling, she shuts down the computer and quietly leaves the room. As she hurriedly leaves the asylum for her apartment in pursuit of a shower and a fresh change of clothes Harleen can't seem to rid herself of the sound of him longingly calling out her name.

x


End file.
